Cast In Secret (7 page)

“Who lives here?”

“Ybelline.”

“I know of only one Ybelline who works outside of the Tha’alani enclave in any official capacity.” He gave her an odd look.

“Yes. It’s the same Ybelline. We met her – ”

“You met her,” he said gently.

” – when the Dragons came to talk.”

“You didn’t seem to love her then.”

“She’s Tha’alani.” Kaylin shrugged.

“Kaylin – why are you going? Your feelings about the Tha’alani have been widely quoted in the office memos whenever someone’s bored.”

She shrugged. “She asked to see me.”

He stopped walking. “I’m serious, Kaylin.”

Kaylin didn’t. “I can tell.” Severn’s stride was long enough that he could damn well catch up. He did, and caught her arm; she was in good enough shape that he staggered a step before bringing her to a halt.

She thought about lying to him, because she didn’t feel she owed him the truth. But when she opened her mouth, she said, “She didn’t touch me. But – when I looked at her, when I saw what she did for Catti, I thought she
could
. That I would let her. That she would see everything about me that I despise and she wouldn’t care. She would like me anyway.”

“You trusted her.”

Kaylin shrugged. She’d learned the gesture from Severn. “I always trust my instincts,” she said at last. “And yes. Even though she – yes. I felt I could.”

“Where are you going?”

Kaylin stopped. “I’m following you.”

“Which is usually done from behind.”

They had a small argument about Kaylin’s insistence on logging the hours she spent walking, because, as Severn pointed out, at least forty-five minutes of those were her going in circles.

“It’s not even clear that this visit pertains to any ongoing investigation in the department,” Severn added, “and it may well turn out to be more personal in nature.”

“Believe me,” Kaylin snapped back, “if the Hawklord knew that I’d received even an informal invitation from any of the Tha’alani – ”

“He’d be astute enough to send someone else.”

“Very funny.”

“I wasn’t entirely joking.”

She made a face. “If he knew – and if you’re finished? – he’d make it a top priority. We don’t get much in the way of communication from the Tha’alani enclave.”

“For obvious reasons.”

“And there are at most a handful of cited cases in which the Tha’alani have sought the services of officers of Imperial Law in
any
context. He’d call it outreach,” she added, with a twist of lips.

“That would be like diplomacy? He’d definitely send someone else.”

“Like who? Marcus? Teela? Tain?”

“I was thinking of the Aerians. They’re fairly levelheaded for people who don’t like to keep their feet on the ground.”

But as arguments went, it was verbal fencing, and it generated little rage. It also gave Kaylin something else to think about as she approached the gated enclave behind which the Tha’alani lived. They were not numerous for a mortal race, and they very seldom mingled with outsiders.

Kaylin had never been on the other side of those gates, and they had always held a particular terror for her, because beyond them was a whole race of people who could see – if they wanted to – her every thought, past and present. Who could, at a whim, make her relive every deed, every wrong, every humiliation.

It was kind of like the waking version of a familiar nightmare, in which she suddenly appeared in her office without a stitch of clothing on.

Severn seemed unconcerned, but he always did.

And she was competitive enough that she had to match that, schooling her expression as she approached the gate itself. It was large enough to allow a full carriage or a wagon easy egress, but it was – and would remain – closed, unless there were reason to open it. No, the way in and out was through the gatehouse itself.

Which she had also only seen from the outside.

Clint had brought her, when she was fifteen; he had complained about her weight for the entire trip because she’d
begged
him to fly, and he had loudly and grudgingly agreed – when she’d promised to leave his flight feathers alone for at least two weeks.

From a distance – the safest one – the gates had still been a shadow and a threat, and it was the only part of the city she had refused to look at while he flew by. His words carried – the lovely, deep timbre of his voice was something she had never learned to ignore – but only his words, and his words alone had painted the picture she now saw clearly.

She could still hear echoes of the words that the wind hadn’t snatched away, and the murmur of his Aerian cadences.

Severn took the lead, and she let him.

She had something to prove, but found, to her annoyance, that pride had its limits. Even annoyance couldn’t overcome them. Because the man – the single man – at the gate was Tha’alani. And he wore not the familiar robes that she had come to hate, but rather a surcoat in the same odd gray over a chain hauberk whose arms glinted in the sunlight, making clear that the Tha’alani were a lot more fastidious in their armor care than the Officers of the Law – or someone else did the cleaning.

“Severn,” she said, stalling for time even as they approached the sole guard, “have you ever had to run down a Tha’alani?”

“Probably as often as you’ve had to investigate one,” he replied. Answer enough.

“Do they never report their crimes?”

He shrugged. “Either that, or they never commit them.”

He must have believed that about as much as she did. But if a crime did not affect a member of another racial enclave, it was the prerogative of the enclave – and its Castelord – to deal with the crime itself in the custom of their kind. And the racial enclaves were not required to submit any legal proceedings to the Halls of Law. Kaylin had thought it cheating when she’d first joined the Hawks, and had complained about these separate laws bitterly – until it was pointed out that were they not separate she would have to learn them all, and probably the languages they were written in.

Or growled in.

After that, she’d kept the complaints to herself.

The guard turned toward them as they approached, aligning first the stalks on his forehead, and then his face and body, as if the latter were afterthought. Severn appeared to take no notice of this, but Kaylin found it unsettling.

She could not see the color of his eyes, but realized after a moment that she
could
clearly see said eyes – that this guard, like the Leontines and the Barrani, wore no helm. Of course he didn’t wear a helmet, she thought bitterly. It would cripple his most effective weapon. She shoved her hand into her pocket, and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. If it had taken her that damn long to notice something that damn obvious, she was letting her nerves get the better of her.

But Severn was ahead of her, and before she could even uncurl the wretched thing, he said to the guard, “We have come at the invitation of Ybelline Rabon’alani.”

The guard’s expression froze in place, and his stalks waved a moment in the air. He looked carefully at the hawk emblazoned on both of their surcoats, and then searched their faces.

After this silent inspection, he nodded, not to Severn, but to Kaylin, who stood in his shadow. “She will see you,” he said, the words oddly inflected. “Someone will meet you on the other side of the guard house and show you the way to her home.”

“Someone” was another guard, another man in mail. His hair was a pale shade of brown, but it was long, and he wore it in a braid over his left shoulder. His eyes were clear, not golden the way Dragons’ eyes were, but still some shade that was paler than brown, darker than sunlight. He bowed, rising, and she thought him younger than the guard at the gate. His eyes were alive with unspoken curiosity, and his expression was actually an expression.

He stared at her, and she stared back.

“I’m Epharim,” he finally said, his stalks weaving through stray strands of his hair. He waited, and then after a moment, he reddened and held out a hand.

Kaylin took it slowly, and shook it. If it was true you could tell a lot about a person by shaking their hand, she wasn’t sure what she could take out of this handshake. It was stiff, hesitant, almost entirely unnatural.

“Did I do that right?” he said, retrieving his hand, his gaze still far too intent.

“Do what?”

“Greet you.”

“Yes, Epharim,” Severn replied, stepping on Kaylin’s foot before she could open her mouth. Well, before she could speak, at any rate. “I am Corporal Severn Handred, and this is Private Kaylin Neya. We serve the Emperor in the Halls of Law.” He offered his hand in turn, and Epharim took it, repeating the gesture that was supposed to be a handshake.

He beamed. “And what does it mean?” Each word a little too distinct, as if speech itself were something new and unfamiliar. Or as if the language were. But he spoke the common tongue of Elantra, and if the cadences were off, they were, each and every syllable, completely recognizable.

Severn said, “We don’t use names that have specific meanings.” Clearly, Severn had been a master student in racial studies.

“You don’t have a naming tongue?” Epharim’s brows rose. And as they did, Kaylin noticed – with the training she had excelled in – that the passersby in the street all seemed to slow, that their stalks, from different heights, perched upon different shades of hair, seemed to turn toward them. Or toward Epharim.

“Are we causing a scene?” she asked in low tones.

Epharim looked confused. Well, more confused. “A scene? Like in a play?”

“No. A scene, as in everyone in the street for miles stops to stare at us as if we’re insane.”

He blinked. Looked at the people who were – yes – staring at them, and then looked back at Kaylin. “This… is a scene?”

Severn stepped on her other foot.

“People don’t normally stop to stare like that.”

Again his brows rippled, this time toward the bridge of his straight, perfect nose. “They don’t?”

“No.”

“Then how are they expected to observe?”

“Observe what?”

“You. Corporal Severn Handred.”

“Severn will do,” Severn said. “It is our custom.”

“They’re not supposed to,” Kaylin replied, ignoring Severn. “They have other things to do, don’t they?”

“They have things to do,” Epharim agreed, still standing there, anchoring Kaylin in place while stragglers farther down also stopped walking and turned to look back. “But most of them have never seen one of your kind so close. They will remember,” he added, as if this was supposed to be a comfort. She had the momentary urge to pull out her beat stick and approach them with a smile that was about as soft as steel, telling them to move along.

But there were children there, their stalks slender, and to her surprise, almost transparent, their eyes wide and openly curious. Too far away to see her own reflection in those eyes, she knew then what she would want reflected, and the impulse left her. She turned slowly back to Epharim, who was beaming at her with an expression she now recognized – a childlike wonder so out of place on the face of a grown man she had failed to see it at first.

She had never seen Tha’alani children before. Never seen their babies, or their elderly, their youths; she had never held one, never ushered one, bloodied and crying, into the world; she had never been called upon by the guild of midwives to save a mother who would otherwise die at what should have been the start of a new life.

Then again, she had never been asked to lick natal fluid off the hair of a Tha’alani newborn, so maybe she should be grateful. She wasn’t, but that was the perverse nature of her universe. And as they stared at her, she stared at them, separated by yards of street and a gentle breeze. It was utterly silent.

One of the children – dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, too young to be easily identified as either boy or girl – slid loose from his guardian’s grasp and toddled toward her, his stalks weaving in the air so awkwardly she wondered if they could be combed out when they got knotted. It was an idle thought, and it held no fear.

As the child approached, she thought him a boy, and knew that she could easily be wrong, but she had to think him one or the other because
it
was not a pronoun she ever applied to children.

He was smiling, and he had teeth, and his cheeks began to flush as he teetered in the precarious almost-fall that was a young child’s run. All of Kaylin’s self-consciousness melted in the warmth of that smile, and she knelt slowly, bringing herself as close to the ground – and to his approaching height – as she could while still maintaining any dignity.

He wore a blue-and-red robe, gaudy, bright colors that had a sheen that caught light, and gold around one wrist. She held out her arms without thought, and he chortled with glee. Had he been Leontine, he would have had milk teeth, and she would have been a tad more careful while holding out uncovered hands.

But he was Tha’alani, and almost human, and the stalks that had terrified her were almost literally knotting themselves as they twisted. The terror they held for her, perched on the forehead of older men with grim, shuttered faces, was gone.

She thought he might slow his approach, but the momentum of his trajectory carried him forward, faster and faster, until he was leaning toward the ground; she caught him before the stones did. Swept him up, her hands under his arms, and held his face across from hers, laughing, because she
had
to laugh. He was laughing.

And as he reached for her, his slender arms dimpled with baby fat that had not yet disappeared with height and age, she let out a small squeal of delight that easily matched his, and she hugged him.

The stalks on his forehead untwined and touched her face, soft as feathers, but slighter and more insistent. They brushed her cheeks, her mouth, her nose, as if they were his fingers, and then rose toward her forehead and hovered there, waiting.

After a moment, they touched her forehead.

She should have been frightened, but it was
impossible
to be frightened in the face of his open curiosity, his imperious delight, the smug sense of certainty that loved children everywhere show. If she were a danger to him, he couldn’t conceive of it, and she couldn’t, either.